Home Entertainment

If you're a Verizon internet customer and you've been getting increasingly frustrated with Netflix buffering, a fix may be at hand, with a new deal with the on-demand video service that it says should prevent the glitches and pauses that even high-speed FiOS customers have been complaining of. Still, even as the collaborative fixes go into play, Verizon can't help but throw the blame for the persistent issues onto Netflix itself.

Lower the flags to half-mast: Samsung will stop producing plasma panels for TVs by the end of November, the company's display arm has confirmed, as interest in the screen type dwindles in the face of LCD and OLED. The decision follows in the footsteps of Panasonic, which opted to cut its own plasma production in 2013.

Aereo may have faced a huge set-back in the US Supreme Court and been forced to shut down services over the weekend, but the TV-challenging upstart isn't taking it lying down, turning to users to form a citizen campaign to try to rescue the technology. In a message to customers today, Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia laid out the next stage of his plan to save cloud-based antennas, though it won't be an easy journey.

Amazon has quietly updated its Fire TV set-top box to push its Prime video content as well as bring streaming music to the platform, raising its game in the aftermath of Google announcing Android TV. A revamp over the weekend added Amazon Cloudplayer to the supported services for Fire TV, as well as answering a common complaint by making it easier to find Prime movie and TV content that's free to watch for Prime subscribers.

It's fair to say that Google TV wasn't exactly a triumph in the living room. Google's first attempt to dominate home entertainment turned out to be far too complicated and under-supported, and with hardware partners jumping ship, the project stalled. Now, Android TV has arrived to take a second shot at the domestic big-screen, and first impressions are surprisingly positive.

Google's Chromecast streaming dongle is getting a new app for its downtime, with Backdrop turning the TV into a personalized screensaver. Kicking in whenever the Chromecast is idle, Backdrop curates a customized mixture of photos, famous artwork, and more.

Google is rebooting its ambitions in the living room, launching Android TV. "In some ways, the TV space is not much different to the mobile space in 2006," Google pointed out, with smart TVs all having different interfaces, different sets of apps, and no cohesive ways for developers to create one app for all platforms. Android TV aims to change all that.

The smart TV scene may be increasingly the preserve of affordable set-top boxes like Chromecast and Fire TV, but LG isn't giving up on its webOS plans, pushing out the tools it hopes will encourage developers to get onboard. Freshly released, the webOS TV SDK will allow developers to cook up apps for LG's sets, test them on a TV emulator, and then package them up for distribution to the new app store.

Apple TV has seen another update, bringing ABC News as well as several other new or updated sources to the set-top box. Although ABC already had its Watch ABC app for Apple TV as of December last year, the new app does not require a cable account in order to use it, with live and on-demand content served up for free.

Samsung has boosted its Ultra HD TV range, including a pair of curved sets and a sizable 85-inch model for those with big living rooms. The new 85-inch HU8550 Series TV is the largest in its product line - though not the largest UHD TV Samsung actually offers, which is a whopping 110-inches - while the HU7250 Series brings curved UHD to a $2,200 price point, with what the company claims is a broader "sweet spot" for viewers.